So Close, No Matter How Far
by dragonflybeach
Summary: Sam spent nearly 19 years wishing for the chance to be "normal". When he finally gets it, he spends the next year wondering if he's made the biggest mistake of his life. For as much as he hated the hunting lifestyle, he never dreamed it would be so hard to leave behind. He's not the only one having trouble letting go.


**September 27, 2002**

Sam heard the sound as he put his key into the dorm room door.

He would know that engine rev anywhere.

He ran down the hall to the window overlooking the parking lot, leaving his key in the door.

On the road in front of the dorm was a battered old Chevy Suburban, two tone faded brown and primer gray.

His shoulders slumped as he turned, walking back to his room.

If he had waited a few more seconds, he would have seen a black 1967 Chevy Impala pull out from the other side of the truck.

* * *

**October 15, 2002**

After his second cup of coffee, Dean dug his cell phone out of his duffle to report to Bobby that there was one less skinwalker in Columbus, Indiana.

_Missed Call_

Dean stared at the unfamiliar number for a few seconds before punching the button to dial it.

The phone rang and rang. No one answered. He held the line, allowing the phone to continue to ring.

At fifty rings, he finally hung up.

He fished in his bag for the badge he had swiped a week before on a run in with a local law enforcement that had been a little too close for comfort, before dialing AT&T. He smiled before he spoke, because it always made his voice sound friendlier for some reason.

"Good morning. It is morning wherever you are, right?"

"Yes sir, it's still morning here." A pleasant female voice replied.

"This is Detective Larry White of the Collier County, Florida Sheriff's Office, badge number 34784. If you could, please, I need a trace on the following phone number – area code 415, number 5559722."

There was a brief pause before the voice answered "Sir, that's a payphone at Pac Bell Stadium."

"Pac Bell?" He frowned. "Isn't baseball season over?"

"Yes sir," the agent responded. "The regular season is over, but the Giants played there last night, playoff game. My boyfriend is a baseball fanatic."

"Thank you for your help." He sighed before ending the call.

A payphone at a baseball stadium during a playoff game. What, thirty or forty thousand people? Some drunk dialed the wrong phone number.

Doesn't mean it was Sam.

The fact that the call came from California was just a coincidence.

Dean sighed and leaned his head against his hand for a moment, until John came out of the shower and asked "Did you call Bobby?"

* * *

**October 30, 2002**

_"The number you have dialed is no longer in service … "_

Sam flipped his phone closed before dialing Dean's backup cell, silently thanking the geek in his physics class who had shown him how to make a false number show up on the receiving phone's caller id, because Dean would catch on if Sam continued to call from payphones in tourist areas of California.

_"Hey, if you called this number, you should know who this is, so leave me a message." _

Sam clenched his teeth and pretended his chest didn't ache at the sound of the familiar voice.

Twenty seven days later, right on schedule, that number was also disconnected.

Sam called Dean's third phone, telling himself that it was just to make sure Dean was keeping to routine. It wasn't because he just wanted to hear Dean's voice. Really.

He wasn't that much of a teenage girl, no matter what Dean said.

_"Hey, this is Dean's other other cell phone. You know what to do. If you're calling about 11/2/83, send me your coordinates."_

As always, Sam hung up without leaving a message.

He never called Dean's fourth cell, because in rotation, that one should have been disconnected first, two weeks after Sam left.

He never found out that phone kept the same number for four years, with a message that said _"Hey, it's Dean. Bitch, if that's you, come back."_

* * *

**November 2, 2002**

Dean turned his head at the first sign of the headlights, watching the truck pull over to the curb and park, down the street from the dorm.

Snorting to himself when he recognized the truck.

He patted his leg, making sure the 38 loaded with rock salt was still strapped to the outside of his leg and the bowie knife to the inside, before sliding out of the car silently, tugging his jacket down to cover the gun in his waistband as well as his shoulder holster.

By the time he reached the back bumper of the truck, John was leaning against the tailgate, cup of coffee in his hand.

Neither father nor son looked surprised to see the other.

"If you had told me this was the assignment you were going to handle alone, I wouldn't have bothered." John said softly, looking toward the darkened second floor window of Stern Hall.

Dean snorted, leaning against the tailgate beside his father.

Not another word was spoken for more than eight hours.

As the first rays of sunlight peeked over the horizon, Dean nodded at his father. "Meet you back at Pastor Jim's."

"Drive carefully." John called toward his son's back.

* * *

**November 28, 2002**

Sam sat on the side of his bed, carrying on an internal monologue that he was surprised the guys in the room next door couldn't hear over the sound of the third consecutive football game.

The chances they're actually at Bobby's house for Thanksgiving are slim at best. It's not a big holiday in the hunting world.

Because somewhere in the middle of counting up things you're thankful for, hunters always seem to be distracted by the towering list of things and people they've lost.

But Bobby's house number never changes, and he would probably have Dean's current cell numbers.

But what if they were there, and John answered the phone?

Or if Bobby answered, and announced who was calling when he handed Dean the phone?

If John told Dean to hang up, Dean would do it.

Who was he kidding?

Wherever they were, John had passed out by now, overdosed on football and cheap booze and maybe turkey sandwiches.

If John told Dean to hang up, Dean would do it.

And that was the reason Sam never called, and listened to Metallica on his walkman until he fell asleep, tears hidden because his face was turned toward the wall.

* * *

**December 25, 2002**

Sam wished for at least the thirty third time that he had just found an anonymous motel room somewhere. Scott had meant well, insisting that Sam couldn't stay in the dorm alone because it was Christmas.

But being dragged home to spend holidays with someone else's family, where the only person he knew was his roommate, only reinforced what a freak Sam was.

No, Christmas had not been an important holiday in the Winchester family between Mary's death and they year Sam decided it was, when he was about 8. The year he had given Dean that stupid necklace, butt ugly thing, but Dean never took it off. Sam wondered if he still wore it, or he had thrown it away when Sam left.

Dean had tried to make sure they had some kind of Christmas every year after that, even if it was just a decorated stick and a gift bought at a convenience store and a special dessert to go with their beanie weenies.

Sometimes Dad was there, sometimes he wasn't. It didn't really matter, because even on the years he was physically present, his mind was at the bottom of a whiskey bottle.

Scott's family couldn't believe Sam had never seen many of what they called "traditional" Christmas movies and immediately decided to rectify that horrible situation.

Sam suffered through most of _A Christmas Carol_ biting his tongue to keep from protesting how wrong the portrayal of ghosts was and swallowing all the comments he would have made that only Dean would understand.

_It's a Wonderful Life_ left him barely able to breathe. He saw so much of Dean in George.

And now, with everyone in the house asleep, Sam huddled on the folded out sofa, biting his lip to hold back the tears, telling himself that he was not going to slip into the other room and find Scott's dad's bottle of bourbon.

Sam was never going to drink himself stupid to cope. He would not end up an addict like his father.

The hours ticked by. Sam finally got up and fished his walkman out of his bag. He listened to AC/DC until he fell into a fitful sleep.

If he had looked out the window when he got up, he might have seen a man in a leather jacket pouring a line of salt around the perimeter of the yard.

* * *

**January 2, 2003**

Ever since Christmas, Sam had been plagued by nightmares of Dean bloody, Dean hurt, Dean … not moving, Dean … not breathing. He couldn't even bring himself to say the word in his head.

Sam slipped out into the darkness, creeping down the back stairs to the deserted study room, where he sat on the floor in the corner, staring at the closed door.

He managed to wait until just after 5am, which would make it a little after 7 Minnesota time, but he knew the man would be up, drinking his coffee and reading the newspaper.

"Hello?"

"Pastor Jim?" Sam mentally kicked himself, realizing he sounded like a scared little girl on the phone.

"Yes? Who is this?" the voice answered.

"It's Sam … Sam Winchester." Sam managed to choke out.

"Sam, son, what's wrong?" the minister's voice was immediately filled with concern. "Are you hurt? Are you sick?"

"No, I'm fine." Sam assured.

"You don't sound fine, Sam." Jim replied knowingly. "What's wrong, son?"

"I'm fine, really. But is Dean ok?" Sam choked out.

"He's ok." Jim promised. "I spoke with him a few days ago. He misses you, Sam. You should call him."

"I … I can't." Sam shook his head, which was stupid, because the pastor couldn't see him over the phone.

"You know, Sam, one time when you and Dean stayed with me for a few days, you were watching tv." Jim spoke conversationally. "It was a kid's show, but one of the main characters said something that has stayed with me forever after that. He said 'The greatest weakness of most humans is their hesitancy to tell others how much they love them while they're alive.' I'm not sure I've ever heard a more true statement." "Who said that?" Sam asked. "Optimus Prime." Jim answered, with a hint of laughter in his voice. "That doesn't make it any less powerful."

"He also said 'There's a thin line between being a hero and being a memory.'" Sam replied.

"That's also very true." The pastor agreed. "And all the more reason you should call Dean and your dad."

"Dean is always the one who thought Dad was a hero." Sam huffed petulantly.

"And Dean was always your hero." Jim reminded him. "He and your father love you more than you than anything in this world. And I love you too, Sam."

Sam mumbled something that he hoped passed for "Yes, thank you, nice talk, goodbye." before he snapped his phone shut and wiped his damp eyes on his sleeve.

* * *

**January 24, 2003**

Despite his mantra of how he was never going to cope by drinking himself into oblivion like his father did, Sam got spectacularly drunk that night.

He told himself over and over that he would not call Dean.

Dean was probably out having a good time with a bar full of women who all wanted to buy him a birthday drink.

The last thing Dean would want would be for the pathetic little brother who left Dean who never cried in tears, to call and say he missed his Jerk.

When Amber who was in his economics class found him wasted, all Sam could manage to tell her was that it was his brother's birthday. Amber jumped to the conclusion that Sam's brother was dead, and Sam didn't correct her, because he didn't want to talk about it.

Amber decided that he needed her to kiss and make it better. And as she pulled her shirt over her head, Sam's last thought before turning off his brain was that this somehow made him feel closer to Dean.

* * *

**January 24, 2003**

Dean was spectacularly drunk. He sat in the driver's seat of the Impala, bottle of Jack in one hand and the other curled around the charm on his necklace, looking out across the back side of the salvage yard, where he and Sam used to play hide and seek until Bobby would shout at them that they were going to get hurt messing around those junk cars.

He woke up, or maybe _came to_ was the better term, as the sun rose just high enough to start reflecting off rusted metal into his eyes.

He was covered with an old army blanket that he had not brought out here last night.

He stumbled to the back door of the house, muscles stiff from having slept (passed out) in the driver's seat.

Bobby poured a cup of coffee and left it on the counter without a word.

* * *

**February 6, 2003**

"Hey, thanks for the jacket." Sam looked up and smiled as his roommate came through the door.

"What are you talking about?" Scott frowned.

"I found the new jacket you left on my bed." Sam raised one eyebrow.

"I didn't leave you a new jacket." Scott shook his head.

"Whatever, man." Sam rolled his eyes and resumed studying.

Of course Scott had put the jacket, on his bed. They had just been talking last weekend about how Sam needed a new coat because his old one was getting too small, but didn't have the money for one right now. No one else Sam knew had the cash on hand to buy such an expensive coat, much less a key to the dorm room to leave it on Sam's bed.

People at Stanford didn't pick locks and sneak into places they weren't supposed to be.

They weren't like Dean.

* * *

**March 19, 2003**

Unlike most of his friends, Sam stayed at school for Spring Break. A guy named Brady, another pre-law major who was in several of Sam's classes, had stayed as well, so the two of them took several day trips to various sites around southern California.

As they were going into Fisherman's Wharf, Sam caught sight of a black GMC truck down the block, and his heart froze for a moment.

Then he realized he was being stupid.

GMC made thousands of those trucks. Of course Sam was going to stumble across one occasionally.

There was no way his father was in San Francisco. He told Sam if he left, to never come back.

He certainly wouldn't be following Sam now.

* * *

**April 4, 2003**

Sam told Scott he wouldn't be home tonight, letting his roommate think he had a date. In actuality, Sam checked into a seedy motel alone.

It was absolutely ridiculous for him to be so emotional about this day. If he were a girl, Sam would swear he was PMS hormonal emotional.

Sam had never made any fuss about this date before. He probably wouldn't have _remembered_ the date if it hadn't been 4/4/94.

What happened on that date, however, had given him nightmares for years.

It had been the Sunday before Easter, another holiday that didn't rank high on the Winchester celebratory list. The hunt had been a shapeshifter in the sewers of St Louis.

And John had brought his sons along.

To make a long story short, one month shy of his 11th birthday, Sam had found himself between an unconscious father and two Deans both shouting at Sam not to be an idiot, _I_ am the real Dean.

Sam shot both Deans in the leg. One shouted "Son of a bitch!" while the other wailed and flailed, his flesh sizzling around the silver bullet. Once Sam knew which was the real Dean, he shot the shifter in the heart.

It was only after the shifter lay dead in the disgusting muck that Sam realized blood was spurting from between Dean's fingers in time with his pulse. Sam had hit the artery.

Dad was out cold and Dean was bleeding to death and Sam wasted several valuable moments screaming like the frightened ten year old he was, standing ankle deep in raw sewage.

It was only Dean shouting orders in a voice very much like their father that snapped Sam out of his hysteria.

He managed to rouse Dad enough for him to get Dean up the ladder, onto the street, where Sam ran to a payphone and called for an ambulance. He dashed back down into the sewer, dragging the shifter's carcass off into another tunnel, while he concocted a story of how he and Dean had gone into the sewer, and their father had gone after them, falling down the ladder, striking his head, and causing his gun to go off, which shot Dean in the leg.

Dean ended up needing three pints of blood and so many stitches that the nurse said she quit counting around 120. John had a concussion and needed five stitches in the back of his head.

Fortunately, it had been Sunday, and Dad was able to whisk them out of the hospital minutes before Child Protective Services arrived the following morning.

Any time the subject had come up, Dean had sworn he wasn't angry. He was proud of Sammy for being smart enough to find a way to tell the real Dean from the shifter, and for getting them all out of the sewer alive.

That didn't mean Sam didn't have nightmares about becoming an orphan and brotherless in a sewer in St Louis.

For some reason, tonight Sam could almost believe he was there again. He could smell the stench, hear the slosh of their footprints, feel the rough stone walls and the moisture hanging in the air, smell the gun powder.

He shuddered and cried on top of the covers all night, listening to a cd copy of one of Dean's mixtapes until the batteries went dead in his walkman.

* * *

**May 2, 2003**

His friends took him out and got him drunk for his birthday.

That was the weirdest thing.

He had friends.

He wasn't just the new kid who didn't talk to anyone really because he'd be gone in a month or less. He actually had friends. People who actually knew him, knew who he was, knew his name, and what was supposedly his story.

He never said much about his past, a sentence here or a two word answer there. Somehow the story had been generated that Sam's mother and brother were dead, and that his father basically disowned him for choosing a full ride at Stanford over staying in Kansas and working in the family auto repair business. Sam didn't bother to correct them, because the legend gave him the freedom to make a sad face and murmur that he didn't want to talk about it if anyone ever pressed for details.

Interestingly enough, none of his friends ever questioned Sam's talent at making realistic fake ID's. They just appreciated it. Especially times like tonight, when a fake ID that said it was your 21st birthday got you the first drink free in half the bars in town.

Scott and Brady half carried, half dragged Sam up the sidewalk, teasing him about the two phone numbers Sam had collected during the evening. Scott pulled open the door of the building with one hand, swinging it wide so that Brady caught it with his free hand. The three of them turned half sideways in order to get through the door while still supporting Sam.

In the process, Sam caught a glimpse of a black Impala out of the corner of his eye.

He shoved at his two friends.

"Lemme go." He slurred. "I gotta go talk to him."

Scott and Brady held on tighter.

Brady snickered. "Dude, you don't swing that way."

"No," Sam whined. "It's my brother. I gotta go talk to him."

"Sam, your brother is dead." Scott reminded him quietly.

Sam slumped between the two of them, allowing them to wrestle him into his bed. Brady left, and Scott hovered over Sam.

"You ok for a minute, man?" the roommate asked. "I gotta go recycle some of this beer."

"Yeah, I'm ok." Sam nodded, immediately regretting the motion, which set the world to spinning.

As soon as the door closed behind Scott, Sam bolted to the window, looking down the street to the left.

There was no black Impala parked along the curb.

As he staggered back to the bed, his alcohol fogged mind didn't register how he had been turned around while coming upstairs.

The Impala was parked down the street to the right.

* * *

**June 16, 2003**

Dean parked the Impala in front of a drug store in Union City, CA and walked down the street to Walmart, where he hotwired a mid 80's model Ford truck. He stopped at Burger King down the street and switched the truck's plates for that of a Toyota SUV.

He needed anonymity if he was going to hang around long enough to check out the off campus apartment Sam was moving into for the summer.

For a moment, he thought Sam had spotted Baby on Sam's birthday. He couldn't risk that again.

He wasn't going to let Sam think he was a whiny little bitch who couldn't stay away from his brother.

Even if it was true.

* * *

**July 28, 2003**

Sam hosted a cookout with fireworks to celebrate his personal Independence Day.

One year ago today, he had told his father he was leaving.

The ensuing argument had probably registered on the Richter Scale.

For once in his life, Sam got the one thing he always wanted which had eluded him.

Normal.

Except that he wasn't normal at all.

He still had salt lines at the doors and windows. He had two guns that he carefully kept hidden from campus security, one loaded with silver bullets and the other with salt pellets.

He had an iron knife in his sock drawer, and a silver one under his mattress.

Even though nothing had ever come for him here.

But when Brady found him crying in the floor of his closet way too many drinks later, it wasn't ghosts or wendigos or shapeshifters he was thinking about.

It was the look on Dean's face when he walked out the door.

Brady asked him what was wrong.

Sam couldn't tell him, couldn't think of anything to say except "I'm a freak."

Brady frowned at him. "No, you're not. You're like, the most normal person I know."

Sam stared at him, wondering if he really did have any friends.

* * *

**July 29, 2003**

Dean woke up on Pastor Jim's couch.

He didn't remember most of the night before.


End file.
